By any standard, the birth of the wah-wah pedal was an ironic accident. Besides, how else can you explain an engineering experiment that was trying to duplicate the sound of a muted jazz trumpet, but ended up creating a device that produced the signature sound of psychedelic rock? Other discoveries may merit the same distinction, but the accidental invention of the wah-wah pedal was as poignant as it gets.
Essentially the wah-wah pedal is a filter that alters the tone of a guitar’s signal and mimics the voice of a muted trumpet―until you turn your amp up. Then it becomes a key to all sorts of other treasures, like the tweaky high-end snarl that players from Albert Collins to Jimmy Page have used it to create, the coloring and manipulation of feedback a la Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” or—with the right choppy chords—the special sauce of primal funk.
For the un-wah-ed, and there may be a few of you out there, you sweep the device’s filter through your guitar’s tonal range by rocking the pedal up and down. The further down, the more the wah-wah’s high-end rolls in; the further up, the lower you go.
Accounts indicate that the wah-wah’s creation occurred at the Thomas Organ Company’s workshops in November 1966, when somebody accidentally dipped a potentiometer―that’s a resistor that controls voltage, which creates sonic alterations―into a Vox Continental Organ Pedal housing. Warwick Electronics, parent company of both Vox and Thomas at that point, was experimenting with the design of the Vox Super Beatle, the first amp to put speakers in a cabinet the size of an Airstream camper.
The goal was to replace the Super Beatle’s tubes with solid-state circuitry, and part of that mission was an effort to replace the Super’s fancy midrange boost circuit with a cheap transistorized one. Vox was hoping the new amp could find a place in the hearts of reed and horn players.
As an experiment, the company’s engineers slapped a transistorized tone circuit from a Thomas organ onto a flat “breadboard” for convenience, then decided the easiest way to manipulate its sound-altering qualities would be to plop it inside the volume pedal.
An engineer grabbed his sax and started blowing through the device into a modified Super Beatle and a microphone. No big whoop. A failure, actually, since it didn’t boost the midrange as they’d planned. Then a guitarist who also worked at the shop plugged in. Big whoop!
Apparently Warwick electronics CEO Joe Banaron was obstinate. He insisted on marketing the pedal to horn and reed players initially, despite the obvious. In fact, when Vox introduced the wah-wah pedal in ’67, it was branded with the name of Clyde McCoy, a trumpet player famous for the muted horn sound on his 1951 instrumental hit “Sugar Blues.” Thus the rarest of these stomp boxes today is the Clyde McCoy Wah-wah, replete with a line drawing of McCoy’s mug on its bottom plate. In good condition they can fetch close to a grand on eBay. The next variation sported only McCoy’s signature, when was subsequently replaced during the next round of manufacturing with the moniker “Cry Baby”―a handle quickly adopted by other manufacturers as well, since Vox had neglected to trademark the name.
Guitarists caught on fast, however, and the wah had its most immediate impact on the exploding world of psychedelic rock and roll, promptly finding its way under the feet of Jimi Hendrix, Cream’s Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and the Yardbirds’ Jimmy Page and onto such convention-defying recordings as “White Room,” “I Ain’t Superstitious,” and “Dazed and Confused.” Another story on this site offers more classic examples.
Now, guitars players love their wah-wahs. Next to the distortion pedal it’s the most popular tool in every tone king’s palette. But here’s a dirty truth: the wah-wah has always continued its flirtation with horn players and other musical mavericks behind our backs.
During the creative zenith of Miles Davis’ pioneering of jazz-rock fusion in the ’70s, Davis played his trumpet through a wah-wah and a stack of Marshalls. It is every bit as rich a sound as Jimi’s at Woodstock.
Bitches Brew is Davis’ most famous album from this era, and John McLaughlin, who employed it on the classic set’s fusion-defining sessions, likely turned him on to the wah-wah’s charms. But you can hear Miles trading nasty wah-wah licks later with the maniac Chicago string strangler Pete Cosey (who also played guitar on Muddy Waters’ psychedelic Electric Mud) on the stunning, adventurous Agharta. Bassist Michael Henderson also played through a wah on Davis’ 1972 On the Corner, and later in his career Davis returned, albeit more sweetly, to the device.
There have been other interlopers. David Sanborn used a wah-wah on his saxophone solo for Bowie’s “Young Americans,” and wah-tweaked sax shows up on some Zappa recordings, too. The fusion violin virtuoso Jean Luc-Ponty stocks a wah-wah in his bag of effects. So does Boyd Tinsley of the Dave Matthews Band. Some progressive DJs have even jacked them into turntables. And the Band’s Garth Hudson began the practice of using a wah-wah with clavinet, employing the combo to mimic a Jew’s Harp for the breaks in “Up on Cripple Creek.”
All of which proves there’s more than one way to say “wah.”
For a dozen dirty wicked wah-wah classics, click here.